The prize-winning economist Paul Krugman recently wrote: “Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet.” Earlier this year he also wrote about his “Financial Policy Despair.” One of the arguably good things about Canada has been that nothing quite important enough to despair over ever quite happens here. But […]

Comments from two vastly different commentators on “conservatives” and “liberals” in the USA shed light on why President Obama is so cautious about the emerging health care bill in Washington (and, with some far northern twists, maybe on the strange Canadian dance of Conservatives and Liberals in Ottawa today as well). First is progressive journalist […]

[UPDATED OCTOBER 22]. Yesterday Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff told reporters that “we won’t support the government but, at the same time, we won’t try to defeat the government each time” the opportunity arises either. Or, the “Liberals will have at least three more opposition days before Christmas but … they won’t use those days to […]

BRITANNIA VILLAGE, ONTARIO. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2009. According to some imperfect plan apparently devised some months ago now, this was supposed to be the week when the Ignatieff Liberals led the majority opposition parties of the 40th Parliament of Canada in bringing down the Harper Conservative government. Instead: “The House of Commons voted 144-117 on […]

President Obama is busy this week with an international agenda (Middle East, UN General Assembly, and G20 in Pittsburgh). But the linchpin in the current US domestic debate – health care reform – goes on and on and on. At least the online readers of the Globe and Mail in Canada still rate the president’s […]

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. 11:00 PM ET. [UPDATED SEPTEMBER 13, 18;  and AUGUST 24, 2011]. Jack Layton has been proud that his New Democrats have so far not “propped up” the Stephen Harper Conservative minority government. He’s been contemptuous of the Liberals for carrying this can when no one else would. But on some readings he […]

This past Sunday some of us in central Canada were reading about “How Barack Obama lost his mojo.” Listening to his Address to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care in Washington last night, it was hard to believe that the mojo had ever been misplaced. Senator Barbara Boxer told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC […]

Japan still has the second largest national economy in the world today, measured in US dollars. (The 15 largest are, in descending order: United States, Japan, China, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Brazil, Russian Federation, Spain, Canada, India, Mexico, Australia, and South Korea.) So it is perhaps not surprising that after the United States voted […]

In today’s Globe and Mail Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia reviews Branding Canada: Projecting Canada’s Soft Power Through Public Diplomacy, by Evan H. Potter, a former civil servant with Foreign Affairs in Ottawa, who now teaches at Carleton University. The review is headlined “Who do they think we are?” And it starts […]

[UPDATED AUGUST 14]. As you nurse your gin and tonic on the dock, you may be getting inebriated enough to wonder about Canadian federal politics. Another “nationwide survey conducted by the Strategic Counsel for the Globe and Mail and CTV News [taken between July 29 and August 3, but released on August 11] found 34 […]